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Tuesday, 1 September 2015

LYZ Cosmetics Tea Tree Nail Care Kit Review

Hey there! Today I'm reviewing the Tea Tree nail care products from the indie brand, LYZ Cosmetics. LYZ Cosmetics is based in Singapore but sources all their 3-free, cruelty-free and vegan ingredients from Australia. I use quite a few of tea tree body/face care products and love the smell so when I was asked to review LYZ's tea tree line of nail care products, I couldn't resist giving them a try. I was sent a base coat, top coat and cuticle oil to test out. I've never reviewed products like these before so hopefully this review is comprehensive enough for you to understand how these products work. Keep reading for all the details...

The Tea Tree Extract Self-Sticking Base Coat comes in a 12 mL bottle and has a blue-greenish tinge that I've noticed other "sticky" base coats have. As you can see below when I took side by side shots of the consistency of the base coat and top coat, the base coat is a bit thicker but applies easily. It dries quickly and has a nice tea tree oil scent.

The Tea Tree Extract Glossy Top Coat also comes in a 12 mL bottle and has a slightly stronger tea tree scent than the base coat. Consistency-wise, I would say it is slightly thinner than something like Seche Vite. I haven't used enough of it to say if it gets thicker towards the end of the bottle but I predict it won't because it's not a "quick dry" top coat. It does, however, dry quicker than the other non-quick dry's that I have. After 10 minutes, I could still dent my nails but it was no longer tacky to the touch. As a bonus, it is also 3-free (which can't be said of most of the quick dry top coats that I use).

The last product I was sent to review is the Tea Tree Cuticle Oil. It also has the same nice tea tree scent as the top coat. It comes in a 13 mL wide mouth bottle. The oil didn't leave my hands greasy at all and appeared to be fully absorbed within about 5 minutes. My only criticism would be that the bottle is sort of tall and skinny (like a Sally Hansen Xtreme bottle) so with that and the wide bottle neck, you have to be sure to not tip it over or you'd have oil everywhere (since oil is less viscous than polish).

Smoothing and moisturizing ability - The first aspect of these nail care products I thought I'd test is how well the top coat smooths a bumpy glitter. I used two coats over Girly Bits Congo and look how much smoother it looks. In my experience, two coats of top coat is needed to smooth out any crelly/glitter polish like this so I have no complaints there. Also I didn't experience any shrinkage of the top coat when I wore this mani for a day. You can also see how moisturizing the cuticle oil is after removing my former mani with pure acetone.

Shininess - For my second test of this combo below, I wanted to see how much shine the top coat could add to a matte polish. I used two coats of China Glaze Flying Dragon. With one coat of top coat (right), the polish is nice and shiny compared to the natural finish of Flying Dragon (left) but it doesn't fully smooth out the grittiness of the polish.

Over stamping - One thing that it is important to me in a top coat is whether or not it smears stamping. I stamped an image from It Girl Nail Art IG 102 with Mundo de Unas White and applied another layer of top coat. Most nails were left completely unstreaked except for a tiny bit on my ring finger (honestly, I probaby didn't float the top coat enough).

Chip resistance - Finally, I think the most important aspect for any base coat/top coat combo for the average person is how well it prevents chips. As someone who changes their manicure almost every day this isn't huge to me but I recognize most people don't want to have to change their polish all the time. So on my left hand I wore this mani with base coat and top coat and on my right hand I wore the manicure without top coat or base coat. I left this one for three days (which included two days of work in the lab, a night of cleaning and a two hour ultimate frisbee game - which did break my nail on my middle finger) and look at the difference! I do recognize that my right hand gets more use than my left hand but all of the above activities do strain my nails on both my hands so I was happy with these results.

Seeing as this is the first time I've directly compared how a mani wears with and without top coat and base coat, I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with how much better my nails held up with the use of these products.